Life is a constant battle with an occasional spell of good things.

I got an advance copy of Ayobami Adebayo’s forthcoming novel A Spell of Good Things and here’s my take!
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The author introduces to us two main characters Eniola and Wuraola who both live in Akure town but are seemingly worlds apart. Divided by a deep economic divide, their stations in life in an extremely unequal Nigeria defines their daily struggles, personal aspirations and expectations placed on them by their respective families. The narration moves back and forth between Eniola a teenage boy whose big dreams are hinged on getting an elusive education. On the other hand, Wuraola is a medical doctor in training who is expected to tick all the boxes laid out before a looming expiry date; a medical career, a husband from the right family and the eventual kids before the dreadful 30yr mark.

The book poses a lot of questions through these two characters but also all the other characters, each of whom are really well explored and given the necessary room to develop and exercise agency in the story.

In Eniola’s father, we see a man who’s crushed twice. Once by a system that fails it’s brightest through economic, political and systemic failures and once more by the patriarchy that places the economic burden of a family solely over a man’s head and proceeds to interpret subsequent failure as a personal failure. Even when it’s systemic!  We see how that weight and the judgement passed by society is used to withdraw the manhood card from those that fall short. We also get to see the toll of all that on an individual’s mental health.

Meanwhile Wuraola, has to make a choice between either living the life expected of her or silencing the din of expectations to discover who she is as a person. Through her relationship with her publicly angelic and privately toxic boyfriend, the author explores how complex toxic and abusive relationships are. And that it’s not always easy to just leave. That there are personal and social costs of extricating one’s self from a toxic relationship. That love blinds someone and offers false hope.

The family dynamics on both ends pose the question of filial love and explores how insidious conditional love is especially while veiled behind well-seeming expectations and pride.
All in all, this is a stellar work of fiction that will publish on February 2023.

 

How will the characters decisions today affect their future selves and those  around them? Will they win the war or will they succumb to the weight of expectations? After all life is a constant battle with an occasional spell of good things.

 

You can preorder your copy of the book here

 

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